Building Knowledge Through Content-Rich Nonfiction

The first shift in literacy is to build knowledge through content-rich nonfiction. Think of the two parts of this statement- first, we are building knowledge from text. Students use the text as a source of knowledge. This of course means that in addition to reading stories, students are reading nonfiction. The DoDEA CCR Standards for Literacy requires that in elementary school about half of what students read should be fiction and about half of what they read should be nonfiction. In order for these texts to support the building of knowledge, students should read a coherent set of texts that actually support the building of knowledge through text. This is different from what is typically happening in classrooms now. Currently as much as 80% of what students read is fiction and when they do read nonfiction, it is often as an isolated "experience in reading nonfiction" such as in a weekly news magazine. These texts don't build knowledge through a series of nonfiction texts and they rely on a great deal of knowledge outside of the text.

In middle and high schools the standards require attention to literacy across the content areas. In order to work toward college and career readiness students need the specific literacy skills of science and social studies. This means that science teachers and social studies support student literacy as a way to enhance knowledge and skills in the content area. There are standards included in the DoDEA CCR Standards for Literacy that specifically describe these expectations. They are an important component - not a suggestion for implementation, not an appendix, but an essential part. In looking at a student's reading requirements across the school year, across all classes middle and high school students should be reading about 70% nonfiction and 30% fiction. When the content areas are on board, this means that the English class still focuses on literature with some addition of nonfiction.

Literary Non-Fiction in the Classroom: Opening New Worlds for Students Video